Stephen stopped ahead of me and looked back. ‘Alexander?’
‘What is that?’
‘The crozier? It has been here many lifetimes, left in the care of the church by an early saint. It will be here long after I am gone. A truth that has been touched by the hands of a saint, and will not be defiled.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It is believed that this staff is a repository of God’s judgement, a rod of truth. If any man, or woman, be accused of a crime and deny that crime, should he swear his innocence on this crozier, and yet be a liar, his mouth will twist and freeze in its deformity. If he be innocent, he will go on his way unmarked.’
‘A man must tell the truth before this staff?’
‘A man must tell the truth, always.’
‘Then will you come before this staff, and tell the truth to me?’
He spread his hands before me. ‘Alexander …’
‘You have put me off long enough, priest. Stand before your piece of wood, and tell me why I am here.’
His head dropped and his body sagged. ‘I will then, I will. Just let us have some rest and warmth, some sustenance for the body. I will tell you all, just let us have some rest.’
He was an old man now. A sick old man. Every step he had taken from Bonamargy, every pull on the oars, had been to bring him here, and now that he was home, Death would not be long in gathering him. I could not deny his request. ‘I will see you on your knees in front of that staff before nightfall.’
‘You have my very word on it.’ He coughed, and steadied himself in the doorway. ‘I am a man not far from my maker. My word is of greater worth than most.’
We found Andrew and Deirdre in a room so tiny it was little more than a cell. Deirdre was seated by a small fire beside which, tending a skillet with frying fish, crouched a heavily pregnant girl. She straightened herself when we came in, and I knew then why Sean could never have loved Roisin O’Neill. The girl into whose momentarily startled eyes I looked was every part the equal of my cousin. Long chestnut hair hung in loose ringlets about her face and down her back. Her brows formed perfect arches above eyes of the warmest brown and the hesitant smile lit up a face that was full of life and kindness. I felt I had always known her. I knew Stephen had forewarned her, but her shock at the sight of me registered a moment before she composed herself. She stepped forward and greeted me in Irish, extending both hands towards mine and kissing me on the cheek.
‘I am greatly sorrowed by your loss,’ I said. ‘If there is anything I can do for your help or comfort you must ask me as you would a brother.’
‘He told me it would be so when he went for you. He always knew it might end in this way, as did I. I have his child and he has taken care that his legacy might be fulfilled. No more can we ask.’
I looked to Stephen, but he avoided my eye, and I sat down with some discomfort beside Andrew.
‘And so, Deirdre,’ said Stephen, affecting some of his old heartiness, ‘you have met your sister-in-law.’
My cousin looked up at Macha, smiling. ‘God has blessed us where we thought he had forsaken us. That I will soon see the face of my brother’s child lightens the sorrow in my heart.’
‘As it will your grandmother’s too,’ said Stephen.
Her face clouded, the smile fell away. She looked to Andrew and to me. ‘Must my grandmother know?’
‘There is no need …’ began Andrew.
‘Surely she must know, it is the child’s birthright …’
Deirdre looked pleadingly at the priest. ‘But you know what will happen; you know what she will do: the child will have no life!’
Stephen began to speak, his voice raised, but his breath failed him and he swayed on his feet, only a wheeze escaping his throat. I steadied him and Macha brought forth a small stool for him to sit upon. Once recovered, he tried again. ‘Your grandmother knows what is the child’s birthright. She will teach him what he must know, as she did Sean.’
‘Who is dead now, murdered …’
Andrew put out an arm to calm her but she shook it off. ‘You condemn this child.’
‘There are those who will protect him. We will be better prepared, the time is soon …’
‘The time is gone. Will none of you see it? The time is gone!’
She pushed past him into the church, from where the sounds of her grief wrenched the heart of me. Andrew would have followed her, but Stephen held him back. ‘Give her this time for her anger. She has held it too long, and now she will give it up to our Holy Mother. Let her have this time.’
Macha brought us the food on simple wooden platters. Despite her bulk, she moved with grace, and there was little in her to suggest she had known a life of servitude. ‘She is of a family in Down,’ Stephen had told me. ‘They fell foul of your grandmother’s family many generations ago. The certainty of Maeve’s wrath added to the attraction for Sean, I think. In truth, though, I cannot see that he would have married any other woman. And her lineage was every bit the match of his own. She will hold her own with your grandmother, and the old woman will take to her in spite of herself.’ I watched the girl as I ate, and knew the priest was right.
The cooked fish were coated in oatmeal and in an instant took me home, the softness of the flesh melting on my tongue, the small hard balls of the oatmeal cracking like crisp hot nuts on my teeth. Could I have done, I would have willed myself back there now, to Mistress Youngson’s kitchen in Banff, the austerity of her countenance matched only by the warmth of her welcome, the safety of her home.
In the poor light of the room it was difficult to see whether Stephen improved with the rest and nourishment, but soon Macha was chiding him gently for not having eaten enough, and had warmed a bowl of goat’s milk to tempt him.
‘He seemed strong as an ox,’ said Andrew. ‘Invincible.’
‘I think the trials of the last few days have proved too much for him. And who knows how long he has been living and travelling on reserved strength? He must have used what little fortitude was left to him to reach this place.’
‘It was his home, the girl told me. When he was a young boy, he was servant to the priest here. It was believed he was his father. I think he has come back here to die.’
‘We cannot linger here long. Murchadh and Cormac will be after us soon, and we must get the women to safety some-where.’
‘We must get them to Carrickfergus.’
I nodded. ‘Rest now – I will need what strength you have tomorrow. We will make up a pallet for the priest in the boat and take him with us. Deirdre improves a little, thank God, but with Macha too it will be slow progress. We will start at dawn.’
Andrew looked over to the priest, who was sipping at the bowl of milk and smiling at Macha as if he were only doing it to indulge her. ‘I doubt he will make it to the dawn.’
Stephen finally nodded off to sleep and Andrew went to bring Deirdre back from the cold church. Macha knelt beside me, getting down to her knees with some difficulty.
‘He is much agitated and has made me promise I will waken him after he has slept an hour. I know he has business of some sort with you, but can it not wait until the morning, until he is better able for it?’
‘I do not think it can,’ I said.
‘Then I will make up a fire through there, for he insists he will speak to you only before the crozier.’
‘Let me do it,’ I said. ‘You cannot be long from your time.’
‘I do not think it will be many days now until my husband’s son cries his first upon this earth.’ I forced myself not to dwell on thoughts of what Sean would never hear, never see.
‘You are so sure it will be a son?’
‘I know it. It was promised and foretold.’
‘By whom?’
‘By Julia MacQuillan, at Bonamargy. She has the sight; she is never wrong. I shall bear my husband a son.’
In my homeland, such things would not have been spoken so freely, and I had trained myself for many years to pa
y no heed to them, but here, tonight, I knew that the old nun could not be doubted, that I would soon hold in my arms my brother’s son, and that Stephen Mac Cuarta would be dead by morning. I laid a fire of wood and peats before the crozier, beneath the west window of the church. Neither Andrew nor Deirdre questioned what I was doing, and I was glad to see the two women lie down soon after on clean straw in the priest’s cell, with rugs laid carefully over them. Andrew did not sleep for a long time, but watched them, as I had known he would. I waited until he, too, had finally dozed off and then quietly woke the priest. He seemed to come to with some relief, for his sleep had been a restless one, and once or twice he had muttered, as if struggling in a dream.
I supported him through to the church, for although it did not matter to me now where we spoke, it was he who insisted that we should do it there. The fire had lent what warmth it could to the crumbling building, and two large candles, mass candles, burned on the altar. Through a hole in the rafters where there was no thatch I could see the stars.
I eased Stephen down on to a pallet of straw covered in an old sheepskin, and waited. His breath came hard and heavy, but eased off at last when the exertion of walking from his cell passed. He bent his head towards the crozier and kissed it.
‘You do not need to do that,’ I said. ‘Your word is enough.’
‘For you, perhaps. But I have made many bargains with my God, and may He forgive me, I have not kept them all. He shall know by this that I tell the truth.’
‘He knows anyway.’
‘Perhaps. But indulge the beliefs of an old man, and pray that He might also.’
‘I have spent much of the night in prayer for you.’
He inclined his head a little towards me. ‘Thank you. Now, tell me where you wish me to begin.’
‘At the beginning.’
He almost managed a laugh. ‘The beginning? There is no beginning to Ireland, save the day of creation when God filled her with his bounty and then said, “Come, fight it out.”’
I did not like the blasphemy, and we had no time for humour. ‘Tell me when you became involved in the treachery of Murchadh O’Neill, what my cousin’s place in his scheme was, and why he brought me here.’
‘There is no treachery …’
‘Do not lie to me; I heard you at Dun-a-Mallaght. You plan rebellion against the king. You boast of continental powers …’
‘There is no treachery and there is no boast. We fight for the Holy Roman Mother Church and her daughter, Ireland. We cannot be traitors to a king to whom we have never bent the knee. Our people are paupers in their own land. Men like Murchadh, heads of great families, revered through all Ulster, forced to till the land like beasts or peasants.’
‘But there is peace,’ I said. ‘And Murchadh has prospered in this peace. Many have told me so – he has made his bargains with the English and has done well of it.’
‘And is held in distrust and contempt by the Irish because of it, and do you think he does not know that? He wanted Roisin to marry Sean to gain some of the affection and esteem in which your grandmother’s family is held, as well as to build up his lands.’
‘But surely that could have been achieved without rebellion?’
‘He can only properly establish himself by wresting power from his English masters.’
‘But why did you join with him? You saw what he did to Michael; you know what he has done to others.’ My mind went back to the shabby Scots inn where Andrew and I had taken rest and sustenance, where a widow and her children lived in the shadow of a murdered son.
He breathed deep. ‘I made common cause with Murchadh for a greater purpose than his: a cause whose ends could not be achieved in opposition to his, so must needs join with them. But it was never Murchadh who was to lead the struggle, it was to have been Sean. Murchadh does what generations of his sort in Ireland, leaders of septs, have done through time – he fights for himself. He has used the English to further his own ends, and has no notion of leading a rising for the sake of the Irish. Throughout time, for centuries, our poets have called for a leader who would put an end to rivalries, unite Ireland, and protect her against the foreign invader. It was to have been Sean. Did you think for a minute your cousin was involved with Murchadh for personal gain? Sean was all that a leader should have been, and with access to Murchadh’s power base, much might have been achieved. And he was faithful, too. Faithful to the Church and to Rome.’
It made sense now, the talk of powerful friends, of Louvain, Madrid. ‘And this is why you came back from the continent? To put your Franciscan mission in the hands of the king of Spain, and wrench Ireland from King Charles’s hands in the name of Rome?’
‘You think I had done better to stay in my college in Louvain and simply pray for Ireland?’
‘Better than to have joined with a butcher like Murchadh.’
‘Butchery, is it? Let me tell you something of butchery, my young Scottish friend. When Chichester burned and destroyed the whole of Ulster, when you were a babe safe in your mother’s arms in Scotland, and Sean had been abandoned by her, starving children were found with their hands in the innards of their dead mother; old women enticed boys and girls away from their play, to murder and eat them. And you would disdain Murchadh for making his peace with the English whilst hoping to raise himself once more? Those whom the earls left behind in their flight – brothers, sons – were rounded up, imprisoned, for the very fact of their existing, and some rot in the Tower of London still, children once, now men, grown to manhood in their chains. They will never see the blue of an Irish sky nor drink the clear water of a mountain burn again. Others, who took ship for England to plead their case with their king, their Celtic king, son of a faithful daughter of Rome, never saw his face before they were shipped to Virginia, to be murdered by savages or die of disease in his colonies. Say what you will about Murchadh, but he remains an Irishman, holding his land on Irish soil, and as such gives hope to other, better men, who do not.’
The effort of this speech had cost him much, and he lay back a moment with his eyes closed. I offered him a little water and he took it gratefully.
‘But I will die in Ireland. Unlike your uncle, Tyrone, Tyrcon-nell, so many others that I left with, so many years ago. I have seen the sun rise and set once again on the land of my birth, and for that I give thanks to God.’
‘And that is why you came back now? Because you knew you were dying?’ There was little point in sentiment, or dissembling. He had seen the last sunset of which he spoke.
He raised the familiar grin, and the trace of a sparkle came into his eyes. ‘The timing of that is merely a stroke of good fortune. Many powerful men on the continent take an interest in the affairs of Ireland. Tales of Murchadh’s planned rising came to their ears – through MacDonnell, I am certain – at about the same time that Sean’s letters on the same subject came to me.’
‘Good news for you,’ I said.
His eyes were quick. ‘No: the worst. Murchadh is unmeasured, hot-headed. He lacks discretion. We all feared a repeat of the debacle of ’15.’
‘What happened then?’
‘I forget you have lived your life in such blissful ignorance. In 1615, plans were laid for a rising against the English, to free prisoners – Tyrone’s own son amongst them – and to drive the English, those who were not put to the sword, from Ulster.’
‘And it failed?’
‘Failed? It never even began. The leader, Rory O’Cahan, did little but drink and brag the country round for weeks what he was to do. The English heard of it, of course, and he was caught, tried and hanged, with six others, a Franciscan priest among them, before flame was lit or sword lifted. The Spanish stood ready then, as they do now, to help. But they will brook no more Rory O’Cahans, and Murchadh is such a one. I was sent here to assess the readiness of the English in their settlements – not just the towns like Coleraine, but the bawns too – to meet our attacks, and to gauge the level of supplies we might garner from them. But I
was also sent to protect Sean, and to rein in Murchadh. I have failed in my second object, but God willing, will not do so in my third.’
‘I think Cormac has greater honour than his father ever did, but his determination upon Deirdre threatens to blind him to all other concerns. He is no Sean.’
‘No,’ he said, looking at me as if by the concentration of his mind alone he could pierce my heart, ‘he is no Sean.’
It was cold enough in the crumbling church, and what heat the fire had first offered could do little against the advancing frost of the night, but the shiver that passed down my spine under his gaze had little to do with the air around us. I looked away, pretending to make a start on gathering up the straw.
‘Look at me, Alexander.’
‘It is very late. We have an early start in the morning. We should go back to your …’
‘I will go nowhere in the morning, as you know, save to the place of atonement for my sins.’
‘You may go where you will, if you believe in such places. I have need of sleep.’
I bent down to lift him to his feet, but he shook his head. ‘I will see my last of this world here.’ He gazed up through the hole in the rafters. ‘The stars in their firmament were never more beautiful than they are here, tonight.’ Then he looked back at me. ‘You know now why you are here, don’t you?’
‘I am going to my bed,’ I said.
He reached up and gripped my arm, a terrifying grip from a man so close to death.
‘You know why Sean brought you here, don’t you?’
A Game of Sorrows Page 27